Historic tour will feature Gregory Alan Isakov at Radio City Music Hall and virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall

Daniel Wachter was born in Germany, but he knows exactly how to talk to his fellow Coloradans.

“For the Colorado Symphony, playing at Carnegie Hall – this is our Super Bowl,” said the ebullient president and CEO of said Symphony.

Now that puts things into a context pretty much anyone around here can understand. (And for you degenerate gamblers, the over/under on the big game is 147 arpeggios in regulation time.)

In what it is being called a once-a-century moment, the Colorado Symphony embarks next week on a historic visit to New York City that promises not only to boost the national reputation of our state symphony, but also to promote Colorado as a destination for both cultural tourists and world-class musicians alike.

With the Symphony’s Boettcher Concert Hall home now on track to get its first real improvements ever, Wachter means it when he says, “This is a moment for our organization that rivals the energy and pride of seeing the Broncos take the field at the Super Bowl.”

Starting at quarterback for Team Symphony will be favorite Centennial son Gregory Alan Isakov for two instantly sold-out concerts at Radio City Music Hall (Jan. 30-31), followed the next night by an evening at Carnegie Hall with perennial All-Pro violinist Itzhak Perlman, now playing in his 65th professional season. (Consider that Perlman, now 80, made his Carnegie Hall debut back in 1965.)

Just as you can be sure the city of Denver will throw the Broncos another sendoff party should they advance to the (real) Super Bowl, the Colorado Symphony is hosting its own New York City Tour Sendoff Concert on Tuesday night, with Mayor Mike Johnston and other civic leaders in attendance. Wachter is calling this kickoff party “a major moment of civic pride,” with already more than 2,000 tickets sold.

“We invite the whole community to join us to celebrate the new year, to celebrate the arts, and to celebrate the high-caliber Colorado musicians who have earned the right to play on those New York stages,” he said.

This Gotham City double-header has been carefully designed to show off both the yin and the yang of the Colorado Symphony in 2026: The yin: That our team can crush the classics with the best of them (and they get no better than Perlman). The yang: “Let’s also show New York the other side of what we’re nationally watched for,” Wachter said. That being creative crossover collaborations with hipster musicians of all genres – yes, even classical hipsters.

The Colorado Symphony has a long recent history of bringing full orchestral flesh to the musical stylings of Cypress Hill, Ben Folds, Cynthia Erivo, Nathaniel Rateliffe and more. Coming up: Sutton Foster and Kelli O’Hara (together); Bruce Hornsby; Lang Lang; The Head and the Heart, Yo-Yo Ma and even Peppa Pig.

Who better to partner with in New York than Boulder’s own Gregory Alan Isakov and his poetic blend of indie-folk and intimate Americana?

“To be clear, we look at classical music to be the core of our business,” Wachter said. “On the other hand, we look at our vision to be a little bit broader than that. We want to inspire all humanity through ‘live symphonic music.’ And once you look at what we do that way, you can see that classical music is simply one genre of ‘live symphonic music.’

“And actually, this is ultimately a very smart move from a risk-mitigation perspective. Just being one thing means you’re very vulnerable. How can you develop a newer, younger and more diverse audience into the classical-music world – which for some good reasons has a little bit of a stigma to it – without developing other customer segments?”

It’s working.

“Financially, non-classical programming is now a little bit the bigger factor in our earned revenues,” Wachter said. “And we see that as a strength.” Right now, he added, classical programming is clocking only about 60% of audience capacity, “and we want to get that up to 80%. That’s one of our strategic goals for 2030.”

Who’s the boss?

The roots of the Colorado Symphony go back to 1923, but the organization was officially born in 1989 as the successor to the bankrupt Denver Symphony Orchestra. Like many other arts organizations, the Symphony spent many years on the financial brink. But those days are gone, Wachter says with a joy that seems almost impossibly vigorous for 8 o’clock in the morning.

“Artistically, I would say the state of the Colorado Symphony under the Music Direction of Peter Oundjian is fabulous – and we keep on pushing the needle,” he said. “Financially, we are in healthy shape, and I don’t take this as a given as this organization performs its 102nd season.”

If Wachter’s name is unfamiliar to you, that’s because he moved with his family from Cincinnati to Colorado Springs during the pandemic. He joined the Colorado Symphony’s board in 2023 and assumed the top job last April. 

You might assume from his sexy talk of risk mitigation that he comes from a business background, and you would be correct. He has worked in multiple industries spanning consumer packaged goods, health care and industrial packaging, and was most recently the CEO of a small specialty company in Colorado Springs called Chromatic Technologies. “And the fun fact about that one,” he says with trademark enthusiasm, is that his company developed the thermochromic ink that turns those aluminum Coors Light cans Colorado mountain blue when they reach the ideal beer-drinking temperature of 42-48 degrees. (Who knew?)

Wachter fell in love with classical music in 2017, when he was asked to join the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. “It became my church,” he said. “It became my weekly soul massage.”

As is the case with every nonprofit performing arts organization, Colorado Symphony power is shared between a creative boss (Chief Artistic Officer Anthony Pierce) and a money boss (Wachter). And for good reason.

“When I was first asked to join the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in 2017, I said to Spencer Liles (an emeritus board member), ‘Help me to understand why would you want the president of a packaging company on your board?’” Wachter said. “And Spencer had a big smile and said, very formally, ‘Mr. Wachter, you are German. Let me tell you how funding the symphony is different in the United States than the tax funding you guys receive in Germany. Here, we have to pay our own bills. We have to generate our own revenues, which means ticket sales. We have to generate contributed revenue, which means fundraising.

“So one can say that symphony is not a business,” Wachter said, “but here in the United States, I’ve learned that we have to run it like a business.”

This one has a $24 million annual budget and a $100 million endowment. “That’s the financial backbone that helps to fuel the operating budget with a few million dollars annually,” Wachter said.

The Symphony supports 80 musicians and 40 staff members. One of Wachter’s first priorities and proudest early accomplishments, he said, has been boosting base artist compensation to above $70,000 per year.

And yet, “There is still a significant discrepancy today between the artistic level of our  musicians and what we pay them,” Wachter said. “That presents us with both a financial challenge and an opportunity. And in order to meet them, we have to significantly beef up our fundraising game.

“And at the same time, let’s face it, we’re in the nonprofit world, and we enjoy a nonprofit status. That means that we exist to serve the community, and we have a mission to fulfill.”

Help is on the way

Another area that has Wachter giddy is Mayor Mike Johnston’s $950 million Vibrant Denver bond package that voters approved in November. It means the city-owned Boettcher Concert Hall stands to gain $20 million for long-deferred maintenance projects. But it’s not the final solution to a festering problem that has at times mired the orchestra in uncertainty and acrimony.

The Boettcher, Wachter said, desperately needs improved acoustics and accessibility, as well as upgrades to its HVAC, electrical, mechanical and fire-safety systems.

Short of scraping the Boettcher and building a new world-class concert hall from the ground up, Wachter said, the next-best thing would be “a meaningful $120 million renovation addressing the essential and functional needs of this iconic music hall.”

So, $20 million is a decent start. But it is only a start.

“I’m very thankful that we made it onto the bond list, but, obviously, we’re not getting very far with $20 million,” said Wachter, who, at 49 is one year older than the Boettcher, which opened with great fanfare in 1978 as the first in-the-round concert hall in the United States.

“This is a hall that has never gotten any work in 48 years,” Wachter said. “And that’s a problem. Thankfully, the city understands this has to happen.”

By “this,” he means a capital stack of $120 million, toward which the Symphony would contribute $15 million. Which, when you include the Vibrant Denver bonds, leaves this project with an $85 million gap to close. That means next up is naming rights, a capital campaign and a significant philanthropic push involving the Boettcher Foundation and many other parties.

“If you ask for my level of confidence, I would say it’s high,” Wachter said. “Obviously, there’s work to be done in terms of scope, timing, funding agreements and so on. But right now, my best guess on when that might happen is 2028 or 2029.

He is so confident that the coming renovation will happen, he said, it is already driving the programming decisions the symphony is making right now. Including next week’s visit to New York. Because, hometown fans, this touring thing is about to become the norm. It has to.

“We have the rest of this season plus two more seasons to perform in Boettcher before the renovations, and that will bring the necessity for us to be out of our home for up to 15 months,” Wachter said. “That leaves the question: Where do we keep playing the music? Where do we keep on generating the revenue we will need to sustain us through that period of being away from home?”

Wachter wants to turn this necessity into an opportunity to reach new audiences.

“Listen, I’ve traveled the world to see customers in the for-profit world, and I perceive it as an incredible privilege and responsibility to host hundreds and thousands of people in our house,” he said. “But, at the same time, we cannot always expect people to come to us.

“We really aspire to unite humanity through live symphonic music and connect communities across Colorado and beyond. That means we cannot do that if we stay home all the time.

“I want us to get out into our community, but also into our state and now, beyond. This is why we play at Red Rocks. This is why Fiddler’s Green. This is why Ball Arena with Andrea Bocelli. This is why the Arvada Center. This is why Cleo Parker Robinson Dance.

“We are the Colorado Symphony, and we cannot just hang around at our home and expect everyone to come to us. We think that we are part of the living heartbeat of our state. We express its beauty, the creativity, the vitality, the inclusive spirit of Colorado. And that is something we’re incredibly proud to bring to New York.

“We want to really generate unforgettable live symphonic experiences that connect people and uplift communities,” Wachter said. “That sounds very ambitious, but, yes – that is our ambition.”

Next Stop: Super Bowl. NYC 2026.

John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at john.moore@denvergazette.com.

COLORADO SYMPHONY/Select upcoming events 

• Jan. 27: New York City Tour Sendoff Concert at Boettcher Concert Hall 
• Jan. 30-31: With Gregory Alan Isakov at Radio City Music Hall, New York
• Feb. 1: With Itzhak Perlman at Carnegie Hall, New York
• Feb. 6-8: Tchaikovsky’s Sixth ‘Pathétique’ + Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 
• April 10-12: Brazilian pianist Gabriela Montero with Conductor Emeritus Marin Alsop at Boettcher
• May 9: Annual gala, headliner to be announced
• June 3: With Yo-Yo Ma at Red Rocks
• June 5: With Yo-Yo Ma at Ford Amphitheater, Colorado Springs

CROSSOVER CONCERTS 

• Feb. 13-24:  Valentine’s Day with Pink Martini (Latin big band) at Boettcher 
• Feb. 26: With Broadway stars Sutton Foster and Kelli O’Hara at (an homage to Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett, rescheduled from Nov. 15)
• Feb. 28: Bruce Hornsby at Boettcher Concert Hall 
• March 1-2: ‘Peppa Pig: My First Concert’ at Boettcher 
• March 14: With Lang Lang at Boettcher 
• July 15: With Head and the Heart at Boettcher 
• Sept. 6-7: With Gregory Alan Isakov at Boettcher 

LIVE-SCORED FILMS 

• March 27-29: ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’ at Boettcher
• May 22-24: ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi’ at Boettcher

VIDEO GAMING 

• June 26-27: ‘Distant Worlds: Music from ‘Final Fantasy,’ at Boettcher Concert Hall

Info: coloradosymphony.org

Columnist John Moore is the Denver Gazette’s Senior Arts Journalist. Email him at john.moore@denvergazette.com.